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The Face of Alzheimer’s Disease

I know this is not a great photo (why did everybody where red or pink that day and sit in a red booth with brick behind them?), but I’m wondering if you can pick out the person with Alzheimer’s Disease in this photo. Admittedly, the disease is relatively early here, but I think there’s a tell.

5 thoughts on “The Face of Alzheimer’s Disease”

It’s impossible to tell. My mother has advanced Alzheimer’s and she appears fine until she tries to converse. Then it’s that famous “looping” of the same questions being repeated and the answers failing to be retained. It’s heart-breaking to see a person slowly vanish while in otherwise good physical health. A cure – or at least a prevention – soon, please.

In the far right, it’s my Aunt Nancy. The smaller picture is difficult, but in a larger one, she really has such a blank look on her face. For a long while, she was in and out of Alzheimer’s. You’d be talking to her for a few minutes and then it was like a hand passed over her face and the resulting face was just blank. She also took to smiling and not commenting a lot. She’d always been a fairly sharp critic of whatever it was she deemed unseemly and all of a sudden it seemed she was just sitting and smiling. All in all, it was a creepy transformation, especially for a woman who prided herself on intellect and learning (sand was a teacher for decades.) I’m with you on cure and, if not that, some sort of prevention or even, failing that, a way to determine early who has it and maybe mitigate some of the deterioration. Or slow it down. I wonder – do you fear getting it yourself? I did until I saw that my other aunt and my mother did not seem to have it. Plus on my father’s side, everybody has tended to keep all their marbles even as their frailty has increased.

Yeah, I understand! Probably age-related so-called “normal” cognitive decline, but still maddening. Not sure doctors can do much about that, but perhaps being screened not a bad idea to rule out Alzheimer’s. Good luck, Andy!!! Laura